In the last several months, the Chinese government has moved swiftly to manage and shape self-driving cars, genetics data and cryptocurrencies in their country—arguably the three most promising technologies of the immediate future.

The Chinese are very good at this managed-closed strategy. Their top-down approach has some clear benefits over more open models for innovation and technology. And it poses a clear choice for a comparatively small country like the United States.

A session of the Chinese Communist Party's National Congress last October. Photo by Bloomberg.

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But I do think that the most important choice we can make right now is clarity on what our strategy is and then logically following through, versus the patchwork of open and closed sub-scale strategies we currently use.